


Chump

by sahem62896



Category: Oz (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-24 07:05:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1595957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahem62896/pseuds/sahem62896
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Beecher hadn't fallen for the setup that got him sent back to Oz?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chump

**Author's Note:**

> Like any recovering alcoholic or addict will tell you, you'll only stop doing whatever it is you do that's bad for you when the pain of living with it gets bad enough. The same can be said with other maladaptive behavior patterns... like manipulation. What would it take for someone as manipulative as Chris Keller to break that pattern? Being exposed could do it. Here's one way that could happen, I think. Now, you all know the rest... let's say it together: I own the rights to nothing, and this is just for fun.

 

_"My mistake was trusting you..." —Otep_

 

"Yo, Kellah!"

Standing shirtless at the toilet, taking what he would have deemed a satisfying whiz, Keller glanced over his shoulder with an amused expression on his face. On the other side of the bars was the newest hack in Gen Pop — a young fellow named Vasquez who was built like a football player, spoke with a pronounced New York accent, and had an upper lip that always seemed poised to curl up in disgust. Outside of Oz, he probably came across as a big, intimidating ox. In here, though, everyone knew he was a pussy. Fear had never been so obvious on a person as it was on that big, dumb sack of shit. The mere fact that he swore as much as he did was a dead giveaway, and so was his habit of keeping one hand wrapped around the handle of his nightstick as he barked orders at the inmates with his eyes wide and the cords of his neck standing out. Keller just loved fucking with him. It kept him entertained while he waited to hear through the grapevine that Beecher was back in Oz on a parole violation.

Having finished his leak, Keller sauntered over to the bars with his goods still hanging out of his fly. "What's up, Vasquez?" he asked, grinning broadly as he saw the beads of sweat form on the man-child's forehead.

"Hey, putcha fuckin' clothes on!" he commanded through his bared teeth. His voice was comically high which rendered the order ineffectual.

"What?" he asked, looking down at himself for a second and then back up into Vasquez's wide-eyed glare. "Never seen a grown man naked before?"

"Cover it up and get it in fuckin' gear, man! Y'got visitors!" he yapped before making a sharp turn to the left and darting out of sight.

Keller stayed where he was and watched him go. When Vasquez was a good ten feet down the corridor, he sputtered out laughter that was soon joined by squeaky, high-pitched imitations of Vasquez by the other inmates. In the upper bunk where he had been ostensibly reading a magazine, the leathery old codger added his laughter to the chorus too.

"Way to go, Keller," he said as he folded the magazine over one arthritic finger and pointed it at Keller. His voice was deep and raspy, and his teeth looked like oversized anemic corn kernels.

Keller smiled and tucked himself back into his briefs and zipped up his fly. "What do you say, Flaherty? You think he drew that little mustache on all by himself this morning?"

"Oh, that was a mustache?" Flaherty asked. "Shit, I thought he had a bug on his face. Was going to offer to kill it for him."

Keller grinned. "Nah," he said, pulling on a wife-beater and snatching from his bunk the black shirt which had his prisoner number stenciled on a white label. "If you'd said that, he might've started screaming and batting at his face with that stick."

Flaherty laughed again, and it sounded like he was trying to clear phlegm from his throat. Given how much the guy smoked, that was probably what was happening.

"So who's coming to see you?" he asked after his hacking laugh subsided.

"I dunno."

"Think it's Beecher?"

Keller allowed a little smile to show. Coming from Flaherty, the question sounded pure. Like every prisoner in Oswald, it seemed, the story of their turbulent romance was well known to him too. However, Flaherty had never treated it like something raunchy, comic, or abominable. And unlike the rest of the assholes in here who took great pleasure in asking him if he was "missing his widdle pwag" with their bottom lips pooched out, Flaherty would ask him if he missed Beecher with such straightforward sincerity that Keller would sometimes feel like telling the truth and admitting that he did. Of course, he never had admitted it to anyone except Sister Pete, and as much as he liked old geezer, he was not going to let him in that far. And of course, he was going to tell no one that he'd been missing him so badly, that he had orchestrated a little drug bust to get him brought right back to Oz. Not even Beecher. And definitely not Sister Pete.

"Probably not," Keller said, "I mean, he was just here two weeks ago."

"Ah well," Flaherty wheezed. "Well enjoy your company anyway, and try to be gentle with Vasquez on the way there."

Keller grinned and cocked his finger at the old guy who went back to his magazine.

A minute later, he was swaggering down the corridor to where Vasquez was waiting to escort him to meet whomever had come to see him. He cast a jaundiced eye at the pool table where the Aryan Brotherhood was gathered watching Schillinger and a newly reinstated Robson play a game of Eight Ball. None of them seemed too broken up about the absence of Winthrop who'd been found in a storage room in Unit B with his neck snapped last week. Keller certainly wasn't broken up about it. Hell, killing the little shit had been close to a spiritual experience. To be sure, revenging Beecher's dad's murder was part of why that was so, but when Keller realized he could use Winthrop's death as leverage to get Beecher to run a little illegal errand for him, that was when he felt like Paul seeing Jesus on the road to Damascus. All he needed was the perfect sob story, and it had come to him in no time at all...

_My ex-wife, Bonnie,_ Keller had said with spine-tingling sincerity and the most pathetic look on his face. _She's been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She's dying, Toby, and the only hope that she's got is this drug. It's called Oxaliplatin, and the problem is that it's illegal in this country. So, I contacted this guy who... you know... he just... he peddles in these kinds of illegal drugs. All I need you to do is just meet him and take the Oxaliplatin to Bonnie._

It was an Oscar-worthy performance, and Beecher had bought it, leaving with an address that Keller had slipped him under the table. A call to the dealer followed by an anonymous tip to a narc who had collared him a few years back was all that was left to take care of, and Toby would be back where Keller wanted him... and needed him, if the truth was to be told. It seemed to be taking longer than he had expected, but he saw no reason to worry yet. The impatience, however, was starting to grate on him a bit.

At the end of the hallway, Vasquez stood ramrod straight, his eyes darting nervously over the unit, as if he were expecting Keller to be leading an army of thugs behind him. His hand was already clutching the nightstick.

"I'm ready for you, Papi," Keller said.

"Shuddup and move y'ass!" he shouted, making a cranking movement with his other hand.

"You promise to bring me back at a reasonable hour with my virginity intact?" he asked, batting his eyelashes.

"Stop flappin' y'fuckin' gums and go!"

On the way there, Vasquez proved to be of no help when Keller asked who had come to see him; he had just waved Keller forward without a word. That had been odd since Vasquez was a mouthy little hack. The silence was off-putting, but not as much as the way that Vasquez was practically stepping on his heels as he followed Keller to the visitors' lounge. Keller imagined himself whirling on the little punk, screaming one solid note in his face for two or three seconds, and then laughing as the fool turned and ran shrieking for his life. It was a funny little distraction, and it also kept him from getting worked up over who might be waiting for him. His first guess had been that fucker Taylor from the FBI again, but since Vasquez hadn't taken him to an interrogation room, he doubted that it was him. That was a relief, but not enough of one. Taylor was hungry to settle the score now that he had been cleared of Tibbits' murder, and Keller wouldn't have put it past Taylor to try a strategy that appeared more benign... one that involved meeting someone coming in as an ordinary visitor.

Vasquez finally, and thankfully, dropped back as they rounded the corner which led to the visitors' lounge. As Keller continued to the entrance, he heard Vasquez talking very quietly in Spanish to someone else who had appeared in the hallway. He was naturally curious to see who that could be, but didn't look back. Besides, he was much more interested to know who had come to see him rather than the little fraidy-cat who had all but shoved him from behind every step of the way here.

Looking through the window, Keller finally saw his visitor and smiled warmly.

_Awww, how sweet!_

Bonnie sat at a table, studying her fingernails. The look on her face was her typical one — emotionally fragile and over-burdened, yet still wishful. She had cut her mousy brown hair short so that it stopped in a straight line just under her ears. Unfortunately, it only made her look plumper. She was dressed in a plain gray sweatshirt and jeans which also did nothing to hide the unattractive rolls of fat, but Keller did notice that it was the first time in years that he had seen her in jeans and wondered if perhaps she had lost a little weight. Well, it didn't matter; it was all good. Bonnie was here to see him, and a shot of her fresh, naïve affection was always welcome.

"Well, hello there!" he greeted her as he entered the room.  

She looked up and brightened little a bit. "Hey!" she said, as she stood up. She had indeed lost some weight. Not a lot, but enough to be noticed better when she was on her feet.

Keller threw his arms around her and tried to share their customary passionate lovers' kiss, but Bonnie's hands only limply clung to his elbows and her mouth denied Keller's tongue entry. Even her lips seemed adverse to being touched by his. Keller noticed all this immediately and drew back from her with his eyebrows meeting just above his nose. "You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah, I just... well, I needed to talk to you about something," she said. "It's kind of serious."

Her eyes had slid away from his during her answer, and Keller didn't like that either. Something was up, for sure. As if on instinct, Keller made a quick scan of the room for trouble and saw none. Except for the hack observing everything from the far corner of the room and a guy in a beat up leather jacket and a red baseball cap who was facing the Coke machine and pawing through his pockets for loose change, it was just Bonnie and himself.

"Okay," he said, shrugging. "You wanna sit down?"

"Yes, please," she said, and dropped back into the chair she had been occupying when Keller had arrived.

Keller took a seat across from her, curious to hear what she was going to say. Bonnie was not the type to hold back the truth and she didn't have one of those faces that could keep a secret. Even so, she sat there silently, just looking guilty. Thinking maybe it would help if he prompted her, he said, "Talk to me, Bonn. What's going on?"

"Why don't you tell him what your oncologist said, Bonnie?" came a sarcastic voice from behind Keller. The suggestion was followed by the thumping sound of a beverage can falling into the delivery tray of the Coke machine.

Keller turned around in his seat, seeing the man in the leather jacket and the red hat stooped over to retrieve his purchase. He was just about to tell this stranger to mind his own fucking business, until the man stood back up and turned around with a can in his hand. A familiar pair of blue eyes with a wild gleam in them peered at him from under the brim of the hat, and Keller felt his jaw fall open and his own eyes widen in shock.

"Toby…" he whispered.

"Hi honey!" Beecher hailed with his lips pulled back in a nasty smile. "Didja miss me?"

Keller couldn't even breathe as he watched Beecher march over to the table and take a seat in the chair next to Bonnie. He was sporting a bronzy five o'clock shadow, and he looked completely out of character in the clothes he was wearing. Beecher pulled off the hat, and Keller saw that the veins on Beecher's forehead were standing out in that W shape that made Keller think of phrases like 'Watch it, pal!' and 'What the fuck?' every time he'd seen it previously; now the word 'warning' was coming to mind. This fellow didn't look like the Armani suit wearing attorney who had labored long and hard to free him from Death Row a month and a half earlier; this was the crazy son of a bitch who had been thrown in the hole five years ago for knocking Schillinger unconscious with a free weight and then shitting on his face. For a second, Keller even expected Beecher to start ranting about peas porridge in the pot nine days old.

"What is this?" Keller finally managed to say despite already knowing the answer, which was that he was fucked.

"What is it indeed," Beecher responded, tapping on the top of the can with his fingernail and enjoying the look of disbelief on Keller's face. "Well, I'll tell you. Today, we're here to play a little game called To Tell the Truth. Feel like giving it a shot?"

Keller's eyes darted to Bonnie's chair. She wiped at her eyes and sniffed, saying nothing.

Beecher's eyebrows rose and he covered his mouth with his fingertips in an exaggerated gesture of surprise. "Oh, I'm sorry! You two were talking." He flapped his hand back and forth between Keller and Bonnie. "Go right ahead. Don't mind me. I'll just wait my turn."

Bonnie had been looking at the table top the whole time, and when she looked up to meet Keller's stunned gaze, her face crumpled.

"Bonnie, I…" he began.

"I don't have cancer!" she squealed, the tears spilling over her lower eyelids. "I've been doing great! I'm finally eating right and I've been working with a trainer who's been really nice to me! _I lost twenty fucking pounds!_ " She slammed her palms on the table. Her voice had risen to a shriek, and Keller's eyes screwed shut at the sound.

"Gee, isn't that great!" Beecher exclaimed. "She's gonna live!"

" _Shut up!_ " she screamed, whirling on him.

Keller's eyes flew open, and he saw that her reaction had surprised Beecher too. The crazy mask slipped a bit and the W vanished into his skin. Apparently, he hadn't counted on her doing that either.

"You're no better!" she continued, turning her tirade on the other man at the table. "You just used me to get back at him too!"

Her red, tear-filled eyes shifted back and forth between them, and even in his shame at being trapped in his own web, Keller was astonished at what he was seeing. The woman he had married and divorced twice had never raised her voice like this and 'fucking' was a word that he had never heard her use. It was like seeing a reverse Samson; she had cut her hair short and grown strong. He also realized that if he had seen this Bonnie instead of the lonely, sad looking thing he had met shortly after Kitty had divorced him, he would have walked on by and the whole course of his life would have been different.

Bonnie pushed back from the table and rose. "I can't do this," she said and then lumbered to the door where Keller saw the final insult. Vasquez's conversation partner had appeared after all… and it was Sister Pete. The little nun patted Bonnie on her broad back twice as she hurried through it. She was all but dwarfed by Bonnie's enormity.

"It's okay," she said. "That's good enough."

"They fucking deserve each other!" Bonnie remarked as she tore down the hall.

Keller watched in horror as Sister Pete made brief eye contact with Beecher and shrugged. She then turned to Keller and gave him a look that could have turned water to ice before following Bonnie's path.

Beecher sighed and snapped open his can. "Well, that wasn't quite how it was supposed to go," he commented.

Keller could feel the black, sticky outrage welling up un his belly. Sitting there, having watched Bonnie tear out of the room and probably out of his life forever, he knew that he had no right to that emotion except toward himself. However, it was an old, familiar friend on whom he relied when his back was against the wall. "Well," he said, putting on his best shit-eating grin, "I suppose you're pretty fucking proud of yourself now, huh? Finally put that Harvard education to use and conned the con."

The can in Beecher's hand stopped halfway to his mouth. "Strange," Beecher commented, "but it sounds to me as if you think that _I'm_ the one who did something wrong here."

"How could you..." he started.

Beecher's brow suddenly darkened. He slammed the can down on the table, sending droplets of Coke flying everywhere from the open mouth of the can. "Don't say it!" he growled. "Don't even fucking _think_ the rest of that sentence!"

"Hey!" shouted the hack from the corner of the room. "You wanna keep it down or do you wanna be shown the door?"

Beecher held up his hands and acquiesced.

"I can't fucking believe this," Keller whispered.

"What?" Beecher demanded. "That you didn't succeed in getting me to piss everything away so that I could get my ass hauled back here to you, or that I finally figured out that that was your plan and decided to thwart it?

Keller closed his eyes and started to grind his teeth together. That response had hurt, but it was far from the crushing blow that would cause him to roll over on to his back and surrender.

"If you weren't going to do it, then why did you take the address?"

"I was going to do it," Beecher admitted, "until my brain snapped itself back on and I realized that I didn't owe you for killing Winthrop, even if he did murder my father. I had, in fact, gotten you off Death Row before that." He took a swig from his can, and pointed at Keller. "You know, maybe if I had just left you there to rot both Winthrop and my dad would be alive. Even if not, I still couldn't figure out how it was that I owed you."

Keller shook his head. "Only been out a few months and you've completely forgotten how it works in here," he observed.

"So says a guy who has spent so much time on the inside that he has no fucking concept how life really works!"

"I fucking killed that son of a bitch for you, Toby!" he said through his gritted teeth.

Beecher snorted. "Again, says the guy who told me after I got him off Death Row that he owed me his life. Guess that asshole was both a liar and too chickenshit to make good on those words, so he gave me someone else's life instead."

The cuts were getting deeper, and it was taking more effort to keep the façade in place. Keller tried for another stinger. "So you went to the fucking nun, ratted me out to her, and she organized this little intervention, right?"

Beecher shook his head. "Wrong again. I organized this little intervention. All Sister Pete did was remind me that I was being used one more time by a master of the craft and convince me to throw the piece of paper away." Beecher took another large swallow from the can. "Would you believe I was crying as I did it? That's how fucking hard it was to resist you."

A horrible smile spread across Keller's face as he finally saw the golden opportunity he had been looking for to smash Beecher emotionally. "Well then," he said in a voice just above a whisper, "I guess I was right. Oz didn't make you a bitch, you were born one." With that he sat back, expecting the comment to slice Beecher's heart in half. He steeled himself for Beecher's counterattack which was sure to involve him launching himself across the table screaming, the same way it had the last time he had said that to Beecher.

Beecher did neither. "Oh, _I'm_ the bitch?" he asked. "Really? 'Cause the way I see it, you're the one who's suffering without me rather than the other way around."

Keller felt the smirk fade and the edge start to give. Toby was right. He was suffering in Oz without him. It had been obvious to Sister Pete, the same woman whose suggestion that Keller invest some time in helping his ex-wives that had given birth to this plan which had failed fucking miserably. Beecher had his kids and this teacher that he was fucking out there. Keller had no one except maybe Sister Pete. Of course now that this major fuck-a-row had come to pass, he wasn't even going to have her to turn to for anything. He was alone... and suffering. It was a realization that was a more devastating blow than any physical attack Beecher could have thrown at him.

"And," Beecher went on, "If I'm such a contemptible bitch and you're resorting to measures like this to get me back, what kind of a lovesick pussy does that make you look like to the rest of these fuckers?" Beecher did get up from his chair now, and he leaned across the table and got as close to Keller's face as he possibly could. "Your plan didn't even succeed. What's that going to do to your precious fucking reputation in here?"

Keller's mouth fell open again. He was mortified. Once again, Toby was correct. Nothing stayed a secret in Oz, and information flowed through the inmate population with alarming speed. When word got out about this flub and the motivation behind it, as Keller knew it would, he was going to be even more humiliated than he was sitting here with his dick blowing in the wind. They'd never let up on him. Never.

And Beecher had known that too.

It seemed he hadn't forgotten how life worked in here after all.

_Oh shit!_

Across the table from him, Beecher's crazy face was peering back at him and the W was visible. The word that came to Keller's mind now was 'winner,' and the horror of that moment was augmented by what Beecher said next:

"Face it, Keller. You lost."

Keller felt as if the floor had collapsed underneath him, and he felt more vulnerable than he had ever known it possible. He wasn't just rolled onto his back in surrender; he was humbly licking his attacker's forepaw too.

Beecher sat back in his chair and finished off his Coke with two large swallows. He set the can down and belched. "You know," he said after a second or two had passed, "the last time I saw that look on your face was after I told you I had shanked you." He tittered and then added, "You still don't know if that was me, do you?"

"Toby..." he said, utterly defeated.

"That's the only part of this that I still don't understand," Beecher explained, getting ser ious again. "Did you really think I wasn't going to eventually figure it out? Are you really so arrogant that you never believe anyone will catch on to the fact that you're fucking scamming them?"

"No Toby..."

Beecher's brow darkened again. "You must really think I'm stupid... and weak."

"Toby, please..."

"Too stupid and weak to stand up to your charming ass!" he bellowed. "Ain't that right, Keller?"

"I'm not going to fucking warn you again!" shouted the hack from the corner. "One more sound from that table and this visit is over!"

They both were silent for a minute, then Keller spoke first.

"You're right," he muttered. "The stupid one is me."

Beecher remained stony. "Oh, don't play the wounded puppy with me now," he warned.

"I'm not!" Keller cried, not caring that he sounded craven and puny. "You're right, okay? I'm the fucking stupid and weak one! It's killing me that you get to have your life back without me, and that I'm fucking dying in here without you! It's driving me crazy!"

It was no performance this time. It was the unvarnished truth. Even so, Keller was relieved and grateful to see Beecher's facial expression soften ever so slightly. Did it mean that maybe Beecher still loved him too? Even after this, the final and ultimate failure as a lover and a friend?

"I can't help that," Beecher said. The tears were starting to well in his eyes now. "I tried, but I can't do anything more." He rubbed the heel of his hand into his eye and sniffed. "All I want to know now is why, Keller. Why?"

Keller saw Beecher's own tough guy wall crumbling and made one more try... a sincere one, this time. "Toby," he said, "I couldn't face the rest of my life living in here without you. Don't you see I did what I did out of love?"

It didn't work.

"If you really love me," Toby said wearily, "then leave me alone."

Stark terror stole into him now. He would have done anything at this moment to prove the sincerity of his love, but not that. Beecher might as well have been asking him to deliver the moon to him on a silver platter. Even that would have been an easier task than walking away.

"I can't," he said, pleading with his eyes.

"Listen to me... listen to me!" Beecher said, raising his hands in front of his face as if to control the emotion in his words by catching them and holding them in place. "I loved alcohol. I loved heroin. I had to put them behind me because they were poison.... death!"

Keller watched as Beecher's hands came across the table and wrapped themselves around his wrists. When it looked like they were going to stay put, he looked back up at the face across the table. It was red-eyed and tired. Beecher seemed to have age ten years in the few minutes that he had been in this room. It was as if all the fights, the sex, the conversations, the chess games, the wrestling, the allegations, the hurt feelings, the broken promises, the occasions where they had saved each other's lives, and the killings had finally sneaked up on him and ripped away his youth and his energy.

_Oh Christ, Toby,_ he thought, _look what I've done to you. I'm so sorry._

"You... are death." Toby whispered.

The words sank in, and Keller tried to remember if the pain had been this bad when he had been shanked in the storage room (maybe by Toby himself). He couldn't. No, that was wrong. This was worse... much worse. It had been difficult to breathe back then, but not like this. It had been difficult to believe he was going to stay alive after the stabbing. He was beginning to think it might be after this too.

"Let me live," Beecher begged.

He closed his eyes and nodded. Yes, he knew it was time to fold his hand. He had played and lost... lost big, in fact. Now he was going to have to walk away empty-handed and broken-hearted. The hacks and the other prisoners were going to have a field day with this, and he was going to have to take it. Even Mukada and Pete, God's right and left hands here in Oz, were probably not going to provide shelter. He'd have to deal with it on his own... really on his own this time. There was no other choice. What was it they said in those AA meetings? 'What an order! I can't go through with it.' Yeah, that just about summed it up. But he would. He'd do it for Toby.

_No fucking way!_ screamed his old friend, outrage at the bad odds. _You may be a dirty, no-good, piece of shit liar, con-artist, and thief, but you fucking love that son of a bitch across the table from you! Yes, you put each other through all six levels of hell, but you've never loved anyone like you have loved him! Not your ex-wives whom you threw away, not your family whom you alienated... not even your fucking self! Are you just going to walk away from that? What do they say, man? 'Love is the strongest fucking force in the world' or some shit like that?_

They did say that... and it was. It was stronger than him apparently.

_Bullshit! Don't be a pussy, Keller! Fight! Fight for yourself! Fight for that man across the table! Look at him, for fuck's sake! He's over there dying too! You wanna look and feel like that for the rest of your fucking life in this shit hole?_

Oh, that voice was hard to resist! And his back was against the wall...

_Don't give up! Don't fucking let him give up!_

Keller drew in a shaky breath and made his choice.

"I can't!" he hissed, as he dove across the table and seized Beecher by the neck.

"Motherfucker!" roared Beecher, trying to tear Keller's hands off him.

"Alright, that's it!" shouted the hack. He ran over to the struggling couple, calling for backup on the walkie-talkie attached to his shoulder. Almost as if on cue, Vasquez came charging into the room and dove on to Keller's back.

"Get da fuck offim, Kellah!" Vasquez hollered, trying in vain to separate the two of them.

Keller didn't hear. All he could see was Beecher, his beautiful blue eyes wild with fury and spit shining on his teeth. His hands crept from around Beecher's neck to the back of his head. Pulling with all his might against the hacks who were trying to separate them and Beecher who was trying to push him away, he brought Beecher's face to his and kissed him as hard as he could on the mouth.

"Toby, I love you!" he gasped.

Two more hacks entered the room and jumped into the dog pile forming on Keller. They seized his arms and pried them off Beecher. Vasquez got in between the two men, threw his arms around Keller's waist, and pushed the whole bunch of them back just far enough to give Beecher some room to escape.

"Go!" Vasquez shouted at Beecher over his shoulder.

Keller thrashed in their grasp and saw Beecher standing alone watching the chaos unfold in front of him with eyes that were sad but firm with resolve.

"Goodbye, Chris," Beecher said, putting on his baseball cap and walking to the door.

" _Beecher, don't!_ " Keller screamed. And suddenly, the front of his face was smashed against the table where he had been sitting. The physical pain of his squashed nose, boosted by the emotional pain of his shattered heart, made tears squirt out of his eyes. He managed to roll his head to the side as they slapped the cuffs on him. As he felt the tears leak out of his eyes and a warm trickle of blood fall from his nose, Keller looked up and saw Beecher on the other side of the window walking away... walking out... leaving... leaving him. It was then that Keller's screams turned into sobs, and the sobs didn't stop until he had been in the hole for three of his four-day stint.

**Author's Note:**

> I kinda think it would have been a hell of a show if something like this happened. If anyone wants to pick up the story after this and run with it, I'd love to see what unfolds! Thanks for reading!


End file.
